based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …
1642 – France: Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis of Cinq Mars is beheaded for treason at Lyon. Cardinal Richelieu introduced King Louis XIII to the Marquis. Louis took him as his lover. The Marquis plotted against the king and was executed when the king discovered his plans.
1833 – Captain Henry Nichols hanged for "buggery." That was the actual British legal term for homosexual activity, and it was a capital offense until 1861, when the laws were finally relaxed to allow for life imprisonment. But that change came almost thirty years too late for Captain Henry Nichols. In 1833, the the London Courier printed the following account:"
Captain Henry Nicholas Nicholls, who was one of the unnatural gang to which the late Captain Beauclerk belonged, (and which latter gentleman put an end to his existence*), was convicted on the clearest evidence at Croydon, on Saturday last, of the capital offence of Sodomy; the prisoner was perfectly calm and unmoved throughout the trial, and even when sentence of death was passed upon him. In performing the duty of passing sentence of death upon the prisoner, Mr. Justice Park told him that it would be inconsistent with that duty if he held out the slightest hope that the law would not be allowed to take its severest course. At 9 o’clock in the morning the sentence was carried into effect. The culprit, who was fifty years of age, was a fine looking man, and had served in the Peninsular war. He was connected with a highly respectable family; but, since his apprehension not a single member of it visited him.
* Apparently, Captain Beauclerk suicided on being caught with Nichols at "buggery" of one "Boy Lawrence." Poor buggers!
1882 – André Germain, aka Loïs Cendré, (d.1971) was a French journalist, essayist, poet and writer. He became known, among other things, through the novel Mephisto by Klaus Mann, in which he appears as Pierre Larue.
Germain was the son of a banker who had made considerable fortunes as the founder of the Crédit Lyonnais banking house. As heir to the family fortune, Germain owned several million francs as well as a famous villa above Florence, to which in later years he mainly invited German artists and intellectuals.
At a young age Germain married a daughter of Alphonse Daudet. The marriage, which is said to have been "gruesome", was annulled after fourteen months in 1908.
Germain made the various aspects of art and culture, but above all literature, the focus of his interests. Even before the First World War, he was a well-known personality on the cultural stage of his home country and later of Germany - for which he developed a special weakness - as well as the rest of Europe as a dandy and author of poems and texts.
After the First World War, André Germain was co-editor of the magazine Revue Européenne under Edmond Jaloux . At the time he was living in a splendid Hôtel in Paris behind the City Hall, with a view of the Notre Dame Cathedral.
From the 1920s, Germain, who spoke excellent German, often stayed for long periods in Berlin and other larger German cities. In the early 1930s he harbored sympathies for the National Socialist ideology and the Nazi state. So he wrote a book "Hitler or Moscow?", in which he indicated that, given the choice, he was more in favor of Hitler. However, during the Vichy regime in France, Germain kept a clear distance from the Germans.
In Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, Germain met numerous important exponents of the cultural life of the time, in particular, the siblings Klaus Mann and Erika Mann.
After a long period of friendship, Germain and Klaus Mann fell out as a result of personal insults: Germain called Mann, who had tried to borrow money from him, "Narcissus of the swamp". Mann retaliated by mocking Germain as "the latest craze for Crédit Lyonnais".
Because of Germain's closeness to and sympathy for the National Socialists, Mann took the opportunity to use Germain as a model for one of the rather negatively drawn figures in Mephisto, which was a parable of the panorama of theater and cultural life in the early Nazi state. Specifically, Germain appears there in poorly-disguised form as a French diplomat and saloon lion who seeks to be close to the National Socialists and ingratiate himself with them.
Germain has been described as "a man who is slender in appearance and not very steadfast". Georg Zivier called him "immensely homosexual" and "in love with the entire Hitler Youth".
J.D. McClatchy and Chip Kidd
1945 – Poet J. D. McClatchy, Jr. (d.2018), was a master of traditional poetic forms, most notably the sonnet and sonnet sequence, and ranks as a significant voice in contemporary American letters. He was also a prolific anthologist, the editor of the prestigious Yale Review, and a noted librettist. McClatchy has written openly about gay desire and love, among other topics, combining the intelligence of W.H. Auden and the linguistic virtuosity of James Merrill with a unique ability to mine his memories and experiences to create emotional honesty.
McClatchy has also made some cogent remarks on gay poetry and the slippery notion of a "gay sensibility" in literature. As editor of the anthology Love Speaks Its Name: Gay and Lesbian Love Poems (2001), he states: "Over the centuries, the homosexual temperament has seemed especially suited to engaging the themes of bafflement, secret joys, private perspectives, forbidden paradises, hypocritical conventions, and ecstatic occasions. In fact, it would be fair to claim that our gay and lesbian poets are the wisest inquirers after love."McClatchy is the author of five original volumes of poetry. He is also author of two prose collections, Twenty Questions (Posed by Poems) (1998), a book of memoirs and critical essays, and White Paper: On Contemporary American Poetry (1989), another collection of essays that offers close readings of poets such as Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Anthony Hecht, and Sylvia Plath.
Born Joseph Donald McClatchy in 1945 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, the son of observant Catholics, McClatchy was raised in a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia and attended all-male Jesuit schools, where he received his introduction to classical literature.
McClatchy's sequence of three sonnets "My Old Idols" (Ten Commandments, 1998) remembers his childhood and teenage years. In one section, the speaker recalls a favorite Latin teacher, Father Moan, who made him "quiver" when "He'd slap the pointer against his thigh." In another, he looks back at his ten-year-old self and an initiation into sex with his friend's older brother in an ice rink's restroom. He writes, "I fumbled with small talk, pretending to be shy. / Looking past me, he slowly unzipped his fly."
Another section recalls McClatchy's teenage infatuation with opera legend Maria Callas. McClatchy's family was not literary, but it was musical. Not surprisingly, he has written several libretti for leading composers, including William Schuman.
McClatchy more fully realized a new focus in life in 1975 when he began living with fellow gay poet Alfred Corn, who he claims helped him clarify his sense of "vocation" as a poet. The romantic relationship of the two poets lasted thirteen years, during which time McClatchy showed Corn everything he wrote.
McClatchy, in a Lambda Book Report interview, states, "My sexuality itself is rarely the subject of my poems. Its consequences are." McClatchy adds, "The nature and formation of desires, the pleasures and anxieties of being gay--sure, these figure in my work. But I'm less interested in homosexuality as a subject than as a sensibility. Nowhere visible, but everywhere apparent."
McClatchy's other literary friendships over the years have included Robert Penn Warren, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, John Hollander, and Richard Howard, as well as Corn.
McClatchy's poetry has earned him praise as a writer of probing intellect and emotional acuity. In addition, he is a poet with deep insight into the nature of desire, especially the complexities of gay male desire.
He was in a longterm relationship with graphic designer, novelist, Batman expert, and vocalist Chip Kidd, nineteen years his junior. They were married in 2013.
1987 – Mike Verschuur is a Dutch racing driver. He won the Eurocup Mégane Trophy series in 2009 and the Renault Clio Cup Netherlands in 2006. He has also competed in other such series as Porsche Supercup. He is openly gay
Verschuur was one of 27 sports personalities to come out publicly during the first half of 2011. Others in that group included Dutch gymnast Jeffrey Wammes and Swedish national footballer Anton Hysen.
"Many fellow drivers – not mentioning any names – have told me they are gay, too. But they dare not say so in public, which is a real pity, because there is nothing to fear. On the contrary, it has only made me stronger. It's made me a better driver."
"Many fellow drivers – not mentioning any names – have told me they are gay, too. But they dare not say so in public, which is a real pity, because there is nothing to fear. On the contrary, it has only made me stronger. It's made me a better driver."
2004 – On this day the Governor of New Jersey, Jim McGreevey, publicly revealed his homosexuality thus becoming the first and, to date, only openly Gay state governor in United States history.
2009 – On this date, in a reminder that elections do matter, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Gay Civil Rights pioneer Harvey Milk. Also honored at these ceremonies was the tennis legend Billie Jean King.
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